Ryan Bickerstaff

All of that swimming caught up with me a bit.  After the short speed workout on Tuesday, I did aerobic swims on Wednesday and Thursday.  I planned on doing 5×300 at 1500m pace on Friday, but I felt absolutely terrible.  Normally if I do a straight swim, I average around 7:00-7:20 per 500.  During the 1200m warmup, I was barely able to hang on to 7:30-35 pace.  It was a pretty easy decision not to do the workout after that.  Although swimming more than usual was likely a contributing factor, I think the 10:30am swim with nothing to eat but a Powerbar Nut Naturals bar in the previous 12 hours was a larger factor.

I’m into a rhythm with running now, going every other day and increasing by 1:40 each run - I was up to 25:00 yesterday.  There is a high school about a mile from where I live, and they have an astroturf field that I’m going to start running on for short amounts of time.  I’m convinced that the permanent solution to preventing new foot injuries is to strengthen my ankles and feet.  I read that if you are a forefoot runner, any instability in the ankles causing more pronation can cause much more force to be placed on parts of the foot that are not designed for that large of load factor.  So, there are a few things I’m doing.

1.  Gradually moving to minimalist shoes.  I’ve tried this in the past, but I either transitioned too fast or didn’t have the ankle stability to sustain it.  The beginning of this process includes barefoot running on the astroturf and walking around in Nike Frees occasionally.
2.  Strengthening ankles and feet.  I have some 5 or 10 pound ankle weights that I can strap onto my feet and then I just move my ankles around in various directions until fatigue sets in.  And then repeat.  I should also buy some marbles and practice picking them up with my toes, but I haven’t done that yet.
3.  Increasing hip stability.  Often times, the source of an injury can be far away from where the symptoms are.  So, while I’m increasing ankle and feet strength, I’m also doing some more hip exercises, namely side leg raises and front and back circles with the leg raises.  I noticed in some race photos that it looked like my hips were collapsing, so hopefully these exercises will increase my overall leg-foot-toe stability.

Knowing that I’d be swimming a bit less this week (~20,000m), I planned on trying to bike more.  I didn’t do as much as I thought I might, but I still managed a little more than 6 hours, including a speed and race pace workout.  I did a 30 minute ride on Tuesday, 1:30 on Wednesday (speed workout), 3:00 on Saturday (race pace), and around 1:15 easy today with a friend from school.  She’s going through the job interview process, and I’m happy I’m not having to deal with that right now.  With all the investment banks going under or cutting costs, apparently there is not nearly as much hiring and all the potential I-bankers are applying for consulting jobs.  I heard that McKinsey had like 1,000 applicants between undergrads and grads for the on campus interviews at Stanford…all for 10 or so final offers.

The joke at work is that everyone’s 401k’s have turned into 201k’s.  Personally, I wouldn’t mind having a 201k but the stock market has caused a little bit of stress lately since I’ve been saving and investing the past few years so that I could potentially survive as a professional triathlete without living race to race.  At Intuit, where I work, they’ve layed off more than 10% of the workforce so far this year.  Luckily, I’m in one of the fastest growing divisions, and I’m in a role that is pretty important for part of that growth.  I had thought about stopping work this year to pursue triathlons, but since now is a good time to earn money and reinvest for the long term, and my foot issue hasn’t completely been resolved, I plan on continuing to work for now.  My current job is really flexible, though, so I think I still have some more time I can play with to increase training while still recovering.

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Sometime in the middle of the 36,000m swim week, I decided to go for a bit of an endurance challenge and top my previous largest volume week of around 38,000m.  I was starting to feel a bit tired towards the end of the week, but last week I managed to put in 41,000m in 8 swims over 7 days.  Surprisingly, my paces didn’t drop much, if at all.  I was just starting to feel more overall fatigue.  One of the reasons I was able to put in that much time in the pool was because my running is only up to about 20 minutes every other day.  I haven’t felt any pain reoccurring, though, and that’s the most important thing at this point with that.

I still plan on racing at the San Francisco Triathlon in about 2.5 weeks, so I am putting one cycle of race prep work in the swim and bike so that I feel more race ready than I would if I were just doing aerobic work.  Yesterday, I swam short course at Stanford in the evening and did 4×25, 4×50, and 5×100 at 100, 200, and 500y paces.  That ended up being around :11 for the 25s, :28 for the 50s, and :59, :58, :59, :58, :58 for the 100s.  I hadn’t done that workout in a short course setup since the Spring, and these splits were faster and easier than back then, so it’s good to see another sign of progress.

Also, there is a couple that swims at the same time as I do sometimes.  The guy is a former Stanford swimmer, and he gave me a really good tip on my swim stroke.  In an effort to keep my stroke rate up and keep my elbows from dropping under the water, apparently I’m not stretching my lead arm out far enough.  They were amazed I could swim as fast I was and have such a short stroke.  I hadn’t realized it before, but after he mentioned it, I could really notice it!  So, I’m working on stretching out a bit more without sacrificing stroke rate or high elbows much.  It’ll take some time before it feels normal and I get the timing worked out, but hopefully it will make a significant difference in the coming year.

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I’ve taken it easy on my foot since getting the cortisone injection. I haven’t run the past week since getting the injection, and for the first few days, I was a little concerned, as I was still feeling some pain. It seems to be a lot better now, though. I really can’t feel anything at all in the area where it has been hurting, even in the morning, when it normally would be the worst. I’m going to go for a 15 minute run tomorrow and am hopeful I won’t have any pain. I’ll probably continue to keep things conservative so that I can build up more strength in my foot to prevent the problem from recurring.

I only ended up biking once this week, but 1) it gave my foot a bit more rest and 2) I made up for it with more swimming. I ended up going a little more than 36,000 meters this week, which is my second highest ever. I swam with the Stanford Masters team a few times, which helped to mix things up a bit. I went to the 6am Saturday practice as the Stanford Homecoming/Reunion wsa afterwards, and I wanted to get training out of the way first thing. The main set was 4×400m on +30 (1:20 base) and then 4x(400m pull on +20, +0, -20, -40 and 100m easy). I think I went around 5:00 on the first 4 and went 4:37 on the last one. I might have gone a little faster but caught up to the person in front of me who didn’t make the interval. I had done 3000m+ pulling the day before, so it was a bit tiring.

I feel like I’m recovering faster from the swimming though, which is good. In addition to starting running again this week, I’ll bike more and continue doing more aerobic work in the swim. Then the plan is to do a 2 week race prep cycle (swim/bike - run will continue to be aerobic) to get ready for the San Francisco Triathlon in November. I’ve been doing race prep cycles for quite awhile now, and they are a little more physically draining than straight aerobic work. I felt like my body was ready to return to base work, but since I have one more race to go this year, I’ll make a little compromise.

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A lot has happened since Elite Nationals a couple weeks ago.  That race ended up taking a lot out of me physically…at least as much as the Wildflower Half Ironman, which is a pretty tough race and twice as long.  Knowing that I’d need some time to recover afterwards, I had dental surgery planned for two days after the race.  Now I have two titanium screws fixed in my jaw where I never had teeth to begin with.  In a few months I’ll be ready to get some crowns attached to the screws and then will have a full set of teeth, more or less.

Having the surgery and feeling tired from Nationals led me to take it easier for much of the week.  I was keeping things aerobic and didn’t start to pick up the volume to around normal levels until the end of the week.  I did a 400 and 800 test on the track for running (my first harder running besides races since the first of June!).  I went around 61 and then 2:15 seven minutes later.  That was actually pretty slow for me (had done 58 earlier this year and 1:58 back in high school), but I think it had something to do with the antibiotics / pain / anti-inflammatory medicine from the surgery, not to mention still being a little tired from the race.

I tried to maintain steady training through Wednesday, as this Saturday (yesterday) I was racing at Scott Tinley’s triathlon down near San Luis Obispo.  The San Francisco Triathlon in November is a more important race for me, so I didn’t want to take additional time to taper for this race.  The race this weekend was non-drafting, which is a nice change of pace for a couple of reasons.  You get to go your own pace for the most part, which is pretty steady, and you can more easily see where your competitors are at fitness-wise in each of the swim/bike/run.

The morning of the race it was raining pretty strong.  It was not super cold, though, and by the run the rain had stopped.  I’ve had some of my best races immediately after it has rained, so I was happy.  The swim started out ok.  I was actually at the front for the first 50-100m.  Then, I just gradually kind of lost touch.  A lot of it was just mental - with the swim not being as important for bike positioning, I didn’t care as much if I lost a little more time if I kept things steady.  But I was also still physically drained from Nationals, and it was hard to will myself to push through the pain to keep up.

My first loop on the swim was in about 9:30, and I was only about 30s down, I think.  The next loop was in about 10:00 and included weaving in and out of the age groupers that started while we were on our first lap.  My transitions weren’t the fastest yesterday.  There was steep, uneven ~1:00 climb up a boat ramp to the transition area after the swim, and with all the rain and no carpet, I was pretty conservative.

There is a fairly steep climb right at the beginning of the bike.  Two years ago when I did this race I put my shoes on in transition.  This time, I figured I would get up the hill fine and put my feet in the shoes on the first descent.  I fumbled around a bit more than usual doing this, though, so I’m not sure if it was any faster.  I think the rain and cold hampered my coordination a bit.  I got into a steady rhythm on the bike.  I felt like I was going hard but not very fast.  It didn’t help when a competitor passed me going pretty fast a few miles into the race.  I couldn’t see anyone else up ahead due to all of the curves in the road, so I wasn’t sure if I was gaining or losing time.  Around half way through the bike there is an out-and-back section, and I could see that I was actually about to pass a couple people and most of the others weren’t that awfully far ahead.  By keeping a steady rhythm on the bike, I was able to breathe through my nose for the majority of it, and I think that helped keep me relaxed going into the run.  I passed a couple more people by the end of the bike, and entered T2 in around tenth place.

Going into the run, I didn’t have any expectations.  My volume is still half of what it was earlier in the year, and I’ve done almost no hard running since June.  My run at Nationals was pretty much a jog because of that, and I wasn’t sure how yesterday would turn out after I went pretty hard, but steady, on the bike.  I actually started the run just waiting for people to start passing me, but I started out running with one guy and was able to keep up and get my breathing under control.  I dropped him and caught up to another guy who I ran with for the rest of the first loop.  At the beginning of the second loop, I really started to feel pretty good - no real breathing or cramping issues seemed to be creeping up.  So, I picked up the pace a bit and passed another guy.  Everything was great until the last mile when cramps in my quads did start to happen.  There is a really steep long hill towards the end of each lap, and I was fearful that it would be my undoing.  Luckily, I switched over to a more conservative running pace and made it up the hill barely ok.  Then I realized there was another guy just in front of me.  I tried to speed up and pass him towards the end but ended up 4 seconds behind at the finish.

I ended up having the fourth fastest run split, 36:30.  That’s not a very fast time by itself, but it was faster than several guys who had beaten me at Nationals.  So being relatively faster with the little amount of running I’ve been doing was a definite plus.  I’m not exactly sure where it came from…maybe from going steadier on the swim and bike…but I’ll definitely take it.

With the 7th place finish (only ~1:00 behind 4th) came a $300 prize, bringing my total lifetime professional earnings to $400.  Not quite ready to retire, but it’s a start.

Next up is the race on Treasure Island.  I had been hoping to start some faster paced running training, but my foot has still been bothering me for the first few minutes of each run and even more so if I do faster running.  I called on Thursday to get in to see the doctor, as it can take a few weeks sometimes.  Luckily there was a cancellation, so I saw him on Friday.  I had marked on my foot where the pain was happening (different from where I got an injection two months ago), and he looked back at the MRI and saw a little notch on the bone where I was indicating pain.  Apparently, I may have worn away the cartilage in the joint, and part of the bone collapsed, causing an arthritic condition.  I’m going in tomorrow to get an injection, and he thinks that may clear things up once and for all.  The worst case scenario for this condition would be to have to have the joint surgically fused together, but the doctor thinks that because I’ve still been able to run for up to an hour at a time, the injection is probably all that will need to happen.

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Nationals were last Saturday, and although I didn’t finish terribly well place-wise, I accomplished the performance targets I was trying to achieve, and I was actually in a position to be competitive going into the run.  Here’s how it played out:

Swim

It was an overcast day at Hagg Lake outside of Portland and in the upper 60’s.  The temperature cutoff for wetsuits is 68 degrees, and it was something like 68.5 degrees.  The water was a bit chilly, especially considering the clouds and air temperature, but I actually prefer not wearing a wetsuit whenever possible, so it worked for me.  There were about 40 men entered and the top 10 got to pick their starting positions on the pontoon first.  Then it was a mad dash to claim the remaining spots.  I ended up somewhere near the middle.  I had a good start and the long straight away before the first turn helped string things out a bit.  I was going hard, but by the time I looked up to sight, the fastest people had already broken away too far over to my left.  It would have been interesting to see if I would have been able to hang with them had I lined up further to the left, but I was keeping a pretty strong effort swimming with a group of 8 or so people.  I was really excited to come out of the water with a number of people that outswam me by 1:00+ minutes last year, including two Olympians - Victor Plata and Jarrod Shoemaker.

T1

There was a steep climb up a boat ramp to the transition area, but I knew that a strong transition and start of the bike would be essential to capitalize on a stronger swim.  I exited transition in about second or third out of the people I came out of the water with and made it up the short steep climb out of the transition area strongly and safely.  Then, I got my feet in my cycling shoes before “settling” into the bike.

Bike

I use the term “settling” lightly, as this bike course was extremely difficult.  It was 8 loops of constant up and down with no real chance to settle into a rhthym.  The course profile didn’t seem so difficult, but I think doing it 8 times over really took its toll.  The second lap was the hardest of the 8 as  the group really pressed the pace up one of the more extended climbs.  I was redlining it for 30+ seconds and almost thought I was going to drop off.  A few did end up dropping off at that point, but I managed to hang on thanks to mental toughness more than anything.  Our group stayed a steady 1:00-1:15 behind the lead group.  It would have been nice to gain time, but at least we weren’t losing any.  There were a couple really strong cyclists in our group, and although they really pressed the pace at points, it made the group effort rather erratic.  We kept going between really hard and moderate rather than a steady hard effort.  After 6 laps it was pretty evident that we weren’t going to catch the lead group and no one in our group was going to break away either, so I tried to rest up a bit in the back of the pack.

T2

I knew that my run wouldn’t be quite up to par, so I wasn’t incredibly concerned with having a super fast transition and fast start to the run.  Going too hard too early on the run doesn’t work well for me most of the time.  That said, I did overshoot my transition spot coming in and that cost me about 5 seconds.

Run

I felt pretty terrible from the very beginning of the run.  Due to the mysterious foot injury I had, my run volume for June, July, August, and September was about half of what it had been the previous 6+ months.  A very uneven up/down course did’nt help things, and I never really got into a rhythym.  I had developed a side stitch during the swim, which didn’t affect things much there or on the bike, but affected my breathing and relaxation on the run.  I couldn’t get good breaths, and my legs were shot, so I more or less jogged the whole 10k.  I ended up finishing 21st.  I think the best I may have been able to finish with how I was feeling on the run was 20th.  A few people in my bike group finished in the top 10, so I’m confident I’ll get there once I have a good block of run training back under my belt.

Overall

Going into the race, I wanted to get out of the water in a strong group and hang on during the bike.  I accomplished those things, and as long as I continue to improve, the run will come back along, and I’ll be in a position to capitalize on the opportunity to be competitive going into the final run segment.

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